Wednesday, 5 February 2014

Thought crime in Russia and... Scotland

Pussy Riot are back in circulation, having benefitted from Putin's Olympic amnesty (bless his heart), and for their fans it's an opportunity to shower some more cant on them.

As an aside, an advantage of commenting on my own patch is that I can actually call them Pussy Riot, which is more than the Spectator will permit. How quaint.

Seriously though. I got in with the first comment, and an ego-gratifyingly large number of readers have felt that I hit the nail on the head:-

So if I walk into a mosque while prayers are in progress and start chanting
obscenities as my way of protesting against human rights abuses committed by
Muslim states, you'll be right behind me, Alex?

But, as other commenters have pointed out, there is no need to indulge in hypotheticals.

Says Ian Channing:-

"A man who threw bacon into an Edinburgh mosque has been jailed for 10
months. Wayne Stilwell, 25, was caught on security cameras attaching the bacon
to the handles of the main door at Edinburgh's Central Mosque."

How indeed. Then, fresh off the press, there's the case of the Labour MP's wife, her daughter and the Dundee cabbie.

Where to start with this? Well, how about the insight into what Scottish Labour grandees talk about in the back of a cab:-

In the cab, the women discussed the issue of local parents having difficulty in
finding places at top secondary schools for their children.

But surely any of the local comprehensives will be more than good enough for the Girolami offspring, and the more underprivileged kids they mix with the better?

Obviously it is some consolation that the case against 71 year old James Young was thrown out. But of course the state-inflicted harassment he has endured en route to the verdict - 12 hours in a police cell before being dragged through a criminal court - will surely haunt him for a long time to come.

The Scotsman's legal eagle does well enough until he offers this pensee:-

No doubt reasonable passengers would be annoyed and offended by Mr Young's
alleged comments. They might even want to ask their council to consider whether
a driver who behaves in this way is a "fit and proper person" to hold a taxi
licence.

Oh, for heaven's sake, don't put ideas into those ghastly women's heads! Not that the thought will have failed to occur to them. Doubtless they have plenty of contacts. Heads you get a criminal record, tails we take way your livelihood. Any Russian knows how these things work.

If there was any justice Dundee City Council would be considering whether this pair of vindictive prigs are fit and proper persons to given rides in taxis. Fat chance. But if they are representative of Scotland's Labour establishment it's little wonder that the independence vote looks like being a close shave.